Is it your intention to create a movement oriented goal whereby your required destination of finality will necessitate entry to and/or residence within the City of San Francisco?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike the Americans. Indeed, they are largely a rather warm and friendly, if somewhat eclectic, bunch. However I do have a problem with their utilisation and deployment of the linguistic structure and format of both the verbal and written version of the standard means of communicatory formulation vis-à-vis ensuring an understandability of the meaningfulness of said intentions actionable or otherwise…...

In theory, they speak and write in standard English, except they appear to have a penchant for a degree of contrivance that has resulted from sticking the words into a food blender, putting them back together in a slightly Bowie-esque random fashion (but without looking like Ziggy Stardust while doing it), and then both squeezing and stretching some of the words and phrases into almost a parody of themselves – god, I am almost doing it myself! Let me give you an example from an American company for whom I have the pleasure of doing some work in the UK, the following having been taken from an internal e-mail issued from the Head Office in the states:

“As we looked towards driving profitability for our business late last year and early this year, we crafted a plan that focused on finding ways to get our gross margin up and our SG&A expenses down. The plan we developed and the execution of that plan allowed us to accomplish both of these key objectives without having a resource action

In the Americas, we are well along in our plan to transform this region. The divestiture of the US deployment business was a real benefit. It allow us to divest of a business that, due to our size, we cannot make profitable

As we look towards the next phase of our transformation, we are starting to execute on our consulting and tools strategic plans. These are world-wide initiatives”

Answers on a postcard. Sorry, explanatory notes should be divested into a written formative for forwardment to the enquiring party.

This tendency to overcomplication and, dare I say a degree of bureaucracy, manifests itself before you have even arrived, in the form of the Visa Waiver Programme. Essentially, if you are from what the Americans have identified as nice little countries, then you don’t need a Visa to come in. However, you do need to fill in a strange green form for each member of your family, plus a white form for the whole family.

I wouldn’t mind, but you genuinely have to answer such questions as: Are you a drug dealer? OK, so there you are, one of society’s low life with little or no regard for human life, respect and integrity, probably a nervous tick and a hint of body odour, and suddenly you are faced with a question which if answered honestly will probably have you on the next plane to Guantanamo. Do they seriously think they are going to have a revelatory and redemptive moment, and declare to all that they are in fact someone who should be twinned with Hannibal Lecter, and immediately fired out of the planes cargo door? Somehow, I think not..

These declarations of wholesomeness are then handed over to a nice man in a military style suit, seated in a little kiosk, around which other nice men in military style suits, replete with guns, look on in an air of stern authority. They rather reminded me of the old school janitor that used to prowl the corridors of my primary school, trying to look hard and consummately organised, but actually looking a bit of a tit. And I am afraid I have to reveal that their efforts to manage and marshal the ever growing lines of incoming tourists were equally successful in creating chaos from confusion. Still, I am sure they meant well.

What I couldn’t quite figure out was the purpose of this green card, the stub of which was harshly stapled into an unsuspecting page of my otherwise rather neat and unblemished passport – only for the stub to be ripped out and thrown away when we went in the other direction 2 weeks later. I don’t mind being counted coming in, and counted going out, but this seemed to be done by the scanning of my passport, not to mention the thumb print and photograph which every entrant to the Free World has to endure. As for the white form, this seemed to be a declaration that in fact I had nothing to declare – in the UK, we do this by walking nonchalantly with a slightly guilty gait through the green channel, and if you do so with an air of overconfidence, you will most likely ensure a meeting between gloved hand and sphincter. In the US, you fill in a white card with all your personal details and sexual proclivities, hand it to a nice overweight lady, who looks at it slightly disdainfully, waves you through with a murmured grunt, and then promptly appears to put the piece of paper in a bin….

No matter. We made an easy exit from the airport and walked up to one of the ubiquitous yellow taxis, piloted by what turned out to be what I am fairly certain was a swarthy man of Eastern European descent (the name of Vladimir on his licence and the fact that his conversation was extremely limited gave the game away a little), but who filled me with little confidence when his retort to my hotel address was a blowing of the lips, a shaking of the head, and a stabbed query of ‘Streeeeet?!’ Fortunately, the address seemed to instil some calm into the situation, but I could not help but think that his demeanour, dark glasses and brooding manner would not have gone amiss in a Martin Scorsese film. He did not, however, say ‘You talkin’ to me….?’

In fact, the wonderful variety of taxi drivers that we encountered during our stay turned out to be one of the enduring memories. There was the Brazilian, who shared my interest in Motor Racing; there were at least two other Eastern Europeans whose stoic but mildly threatening deportment always made me involuntarily search for the proximity of the door handle; there were a number of fairly jolly and helpful black Americans, one of which chuckled with a little too much glee when he realised that as a man outnumbered by three women, he was about to drop us in female shopping heaven, in Union Square; there was the white American who somehow contrived to take us across Van Ness Avenue three times, even though a straight line from downtown San Francisco to our hotel takes you across it once, unless you are inclined to drive your car like you are participating in a full size version of Pacman; and last, and possibly least, there was the extrovert white American whose delight at having English occupants, was rapidly followed by a destructive thesis on his fellow Americans, followed by an acerbic assessment of UK politics, and a handing out of conspiracy theory literature that just stopped short of declaring Georg Bush as the son of Satan.

Our journey to the hotel took us onto a heaving multi lane highway, against a backdrop of sparkling hills, a lazy azure sky and evidence of the famed fog that lurked menacingly in the middle distance. Once into the nondescript suburbs of low rise blocks and multifarious roadside enterprises, we then turned off the elevated road, and wound our way through more largely forgettable city fabric, until the architecture began to get more interesting and defined, and started to display the more regimented style and rhythm of the Victorian era buildings for which San Francisco is famed. As we started to climb towards our hotel in Pacific heights, the arrow straight roads and constant angle hills and dips gave the impression of a suburb constructed of Lego. And it all looked just like it had on the television…